The housing crisis and the Great Recession have placed tremendous fiscal pressure on the United States’ central cities. Cuts in state government fiscal assistance to local governments, combined with shrinking property tax bases, make it hard for local governments to maintain current levels of...

This paper addresses the fiscal behavior of states in response to the Federal Food Stamp program (FSP). The effectiveness of the Food Stamp Program in increasing the economic well-being of recipients is dependent, in part, on the fiscal behavior of states. Because most Food Stamp recipients are...

Our purpose in this paper is to speculate on the cyclicality of state fiscal responses under welfare reform. In particular, how will they respond during the next recession? We draw lessons from several literatures and present some new evidence. An important literature estimates the spending...

The near adoption of Worldwide Combined Reporting (WWCR) in Minnesota has led to a blizzard of critical claims about WWCR from corporate tax lobbyists, the Tax Foundation, and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. These various groups have made a number of policy arguments that do not...

In 1996 the United States revamped its welfare system by eliminating the entitlement to cash benefits under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and by replacing it by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Federal financing was converted from open-ended matching grant to...